Report: Family of four in Marin needs $99,000 a year to make ends meet

To afford a modest standard of living in Marin County, a family of four with two wage earners needs an annual income of more than $99,000, according to a new analysis issued by the California Budget Project, a nonpartisan public policy research group.

But Darlin Ruiz's family of four, which includes her boyfriend and two children, makes do at the edge of San Rafael's Canal neighborhood on just $30,000. Ruiz earns her living cleaning houses and her boyfriend does construction work.

Ruiz, who came to the United States 12 years ago to earn money to feed her children, said she now hopes to save enough money to move back to Mexico in five or six years.

"It's impossible to live here. There is too much stress, too many bills," Ruiz said.

The Budget Project's analysis provides household budgets for four different family types, allowing only for basic expenses: housing and utilities, child care, health care, food, transportation and other necessities. The report calculates a statewide average budget as well as budgets for each of the state's 58 counties. Marin's $99,342 annual budget for a family of four with two wage-earners was the highest in the state.

"When you look at what it takes to cover day-to-day necessities in California, it's clear that our economy is not meeting the needs of many workers and families across the state," said Luke Reidenbach, a policy analyst for the group and author of the report, in a prepared statement. He added, "Our findings point to a need for investments in child care, housing, education, and other underpinnings of broad-based economic opportunity."

According to the Budget Project, in Marin, a single adult needs to earn $38,248 a year; a single parent with two children needs to earn $96,842; and a family with two parents with two children in which only one parent is working needs to earn $71,646.

The Budget Project assumed that a family with two children would need to live in a two-bedroom apartment, and it found that rent for such an apartment ranged from $626 a month in Modoc County to $1,795 a month in Marin, San Francisco and San Mateo counties.

To economize, the Ruiz family shares a one-bedroom apartment that costs $900 a month. Ruiz said the apartment consists of a small living room, a small kitchen and a bedroom with a bathroom inside.

"Three of us share the bedroom (Ruiz, her boyfriend and her 6-year-old son) and my 18-year-old son lives in the living room," Ruiz said. "It's so bad. We have cockroaches. We don't have space for my children to play. But we can't move because inside the Canal it is more expensive."

The Budget Project found that a lack of affordable housing in California is a major hurdle for many individuals and families. It reported that in 2012, nearly one-third of households (30.5 percent) spent at least half of their income on rent.

Lack of affordable housing is also one of the causes of homelessness in Marin. Homeward Bound of Marin, which operates Marin's two permanent homeless shelters, can only accommodate nine families at one time.

"We always have 10 families on the waiting list. As soon as we move one family into shelter, another takes their place on the list," said Paul Fordham, Homeward Bound's deputy director.

Fordham said, after the waiting list is full again, "We get another 10 to 15 calls a week from people desperate to even get on the waiting list."

A one-day count of Marin County's homeless population performed in January 2013 found that 195 of Marin's 933 homeless individuals were children.

The Budget Project found that a single parent raising two children would need to earn at least $35.81 an hour — nearly twice the state's median hourly wage of $19.07 — to cover monthly expenses.

Ruiz said the hourly wage that she and her boyfriend are paid varies depending on the number of people in the Canal who are looking for work.

"Marin has a lot of Latinos, especially in the Canal, and a lot of people need work," Ruiz said. "That is why some people are willing to work for only $8 or $10 an hour. They need to pay their rent."

The Budget Project's estimated budgets do not factor in public programs or any job-based benefits outside of earned income.

Ruiz said Marin General Hospital sent her a bill charging her several thousand dollars after she had to seek treatment for her young son's asthma in the hospital's emergency room. She said that fortunately, Medi-Cal paid the bill.

Ruiz is taking classes part-time at College of Marin, even though she finds it difficult to afford the cost: $253 per semester. She said she and her boyfriend can't both take classes because they couldn't afford the cost of child care; as it is, she pays $250 a month for day care.

The Budget Project found that child care is a significant expense in Marin: $1,436 for a single parent or a family with two parents, both of whom are working. That compares with a state average monthly cost of $1,357.

The Budget Project estimated that statewide a two-parent family with two children, in which both parents are working, needs to earn $81,553, which is $17,798 less than in Marin.

Amy Reisch, executive director of First 5 Marin Children and Families Commission, said the Budget Report's work illustrates that the numbers the federal government uses to set the poverty level fail to reflect the nation's varying costs of living.

"In Marin, that is even more exaggerated," Reisch said. "You can have two professionals both working at what we would always have considered to be good jobs, and they're still struggling to make ends meet."

Tom Wilson, executive director of the Canal Alliance, said, "I think it is a real tribute to the conviction and commitment of immigrants, that they find a way to make it work in a county where they are making much less than they actually need to live."